emergency preparedness


Strange Change, Rainy Days and Big Emergencies

You know you need emergency money, right? But what does that actually mean? Here are the three kinds of “emergency” money I counsel my people to have. One is what I call “strange change”. You should have some cash in the house that you can use if you need to Get Out Of Dodge right this minute: no standing in line at the (probably empty) ATM, just get in your car and drive. For this, […]

College Savings Plans

Tricks About Debt

Preparing for the Great Trumpression

Back in 2006 someone walked into my office with an impossible mortgage. Countrywide Bank gave a 70 year old a 30 year mortgage for more than 100% the value of her house. She was underwater the day she closed, with no possible way to ever sell that house. I was aghast, and wondered what was going on that Countrywide was willing to take on risk like that. I didn’t quite understand the whole securitization of […]


What’s new in the cutting edge world of Identity Theft

Over the week-end I’ve been reading up on how to handle the credit agency breach. Identity theft overall is becoming more and more of a problem, so I don’t mean to diminish this breach as an issue, but I think this is a bit over-hyped. My experience with fraudulently filed tax returns – a form of identity theft – suggests that quite a lot of us – if not all of us – have already […]

Security

Insurance for Workers

Tips about Savings

Have some emergency money in the house, enough to pay for necessary groceries and medication if the banking system went down and you had to pay cash. You can also think of it as “refugee money.” If you needed to evacuate NOW, how much cash would you want for travel costs to far away family? Gas, hotels, meals on the road? Have that much in small bills and rolled coins.  (We like rolls of dollar […]


Some tips on data security, specifically touching on LastPass and ShareFile.

As you get your finances organized you’re going to wish you had a secure place to keep all your online passwords to websites. There are several on the market, but I personally use a Chrome Extension on my web-browser to an app called “LastPass”. It’s free if you just use it on desktops, and a small subscription cost if you want to use it across mobile devices. https://lastpass.com/ Once you have a strong master password […]

Security

In Case of Death

In case of death…

Ever wonder what happens to you, as a retainer, when your financial advisor dies? Even though I am barely 50 as I write this, I actually have given this a lot of thought. Here are the things I’ve done to make sure my people are taken care of in case I am suddenly unable to. (I used to say “hit by a bus”, but a bus driver once vented to me about how much he […]


Insurance for workers

When I was in my early twenties a grad student at my University drowned. He left behind a widow and a small child and no life insurance. They had been living in University housing and his new widow was left homeless. When we had children I made sure my husband and I each had life insurance. These sorts of tragedies are really visible and really dreadful and so life insurance occurs to people like this […]

Insurance for Workers

Book Review: “Wealth, War & Wisdom”

Financial Wellness Lessons Learned from WWII Confucius said, “Study the past if you would divine the future”.  With that in mind, I’ve always been a fan of history.  I recall reading Greek comedies in high school and realizing that they were the same plot as Shakespearian comedies as 70’s sitcoms.  People are people are people.  Study what people did in the past under various pressures and you can get a pretty good clue about what […]


The case against buying gold and silver

Several of my people have asked me questions where the answer is “buy gold” and I’ve been wary about putting that advice together. I’m going to explore this issue a bit, first by getting a handle on all the reasons it is BAD advice. 1. Neither gold nor silver are productive assets.  They won’t earn interest or dividends, losing you the opportunity costs of what you could have been doing with that money in the […]